Popcorn at the Pastor's

This week, I asked my good friend and fellow writer, Hadley, to guest blog for me. I'm currently on vacation, and she was kind enough to share about her and her husband's journey of finding a church home.

Over the past nine years, Hadley has tried nearly every denomination of the Christian church in search of the right fit. Nine years is a long time, but I know this issue isn't unique to Hadley. Many Christians I know personally are struggling to find a congregation with sound doctrine, biblical teaching, and community. It took me and my husband a while to find a church we wanted to join.

Hadley's journey is relatable, and her insights are sound. I encourage you to read the entire post and reflect on the questions she poses at the end of her post — let's start a discussion in the comments.

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My husband and I have been attending a new church. 

We have been trying to find a church family for the past 9 years, on and off. 

It’s been nine years because that’s how long we have been married. When we first met, I wouldn’t have called myself a Christian. But we started praying and reading scriptures together, and after about four months, I finally realized that I believed. One day, I was standing in my kitchen cooking. And talking to God. I remember telling my husband when we had first started dating that I couldn’t imagine myself ever getting on my knees and submitting myself to God and Jesus Christ. I couldn’t imagine giving credit to God for my accomplishments. I am heartily ashamed of this now. But that day, I looked up and said, “I have been waiting for some big moment or event, but I just have to tell you, I believe it.” 

Since then, I have said the “sinner’s prayer” – the words from Romans surrendering my life to Christ. But I believe I gave my heart to Jesus that day in the kitchen. I bought a small silver cross and started wearing it, and that is when I began thinking of myself as a Christian. 

At one point, we had hopes of joining a ministry and teaching the gospel to Mormons. This was particularly meaningful to me because I was raised Mormon. Unfortunately, the ministry we had hoped to join turned out to be one guy with a YouTube channel who had no interest in expanding his ministry beyond the channel. He had a faithful following of people who came to fill the audience when he made his episodes, but he had no interest in pastoring the flock. 

This led us on a journey to find a church. 

We have visited many, many churches. Episcopal, Bible, Orthodox, ELCA (liberal Lutheran), LCMS (conservative Lutheran), and countless evangelical churches. 

We stayed longer at some churches than others. We had a segue into Eastern Orthodoxy that lasted, on and off, for nearly six years before I finally realized it isn’t Biblically sound, and it isn’t what it claims to be. (When I say “I,” I should clarify that my husband knew these things about the church immediately).

It took years of reading the scriptures, prayer, watching countless sermons, studying, and hours and hours of conversation for my husband and I to be on the same page theologically. That was half the battle. It’s amazing how two people can be Christians and yet not at all on the same page theologically. But the second half of the battle continues: Where do we go to church? 

I have been thinking a lot recently about how before we can answer “Where do we go to church?” We have to answer, “Why do we want to attend a church?” and “What do we want from a church?” 

Why do we want to attend a church? Because it’s biblical. In Hebrews 10:25, the Bible instructs us not to neglect meeting together. Meeting together is how we encourage one another. 

“And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one  another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” — Hebrews 10:24-25 (NKJV)

So, what do we want from a church? 

There are no perfect churches. We knew that nine years ago, and we know it today. We aren’t looking for perfection. But I don’t know that we have clearly defined what we are looking for.

Here is where we started: 

1. Sound doctrine.

2. Sound biblical preaching. 

3. Church community. 

We haven’t changed our mind about needing to find these three characteristics, but with each church we visit, we find that we need to refine them or be more specific. 

Sound Doctrine

Finding churches with sound doctrine has been the easiest thing to find on our wish list. However, as I mentioned above, this seems to vary among Christians, so let me define what we mean when we say this. For us, a church has sound doctrine if they believe: 

• There are three persons in the godhead, called the Holy Trinity: The Father, The Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. 

• Jesus Christ is God incarnate: He is equally divine and equally human in nature. He is the only being in existence like this. 

• Christ died for our sins. 

• Three days later, He was resurrected. 

• He sent The Comforter (the Holy Spirit) to the world after He ascended to sit at the right hand of the Father. 

• Christ is coming back. 

• We are commanded to be baptized, but baptism doesn’t save us. Faith and belief and having the Holy Spirit come before baptism. (That isn’t a hard and fast rule, but that’s how we see it laid out in the scriptures). 

• We believe in baptism by immersion, because that is how Jesus was baptized. 

• We are commanded to have the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper also does not save us. 

• Salvation comes by grace through faith, that no man shall boast. 

• Faith is a gift from God that comes by hearing the Word. 

• We are also commanded to spread the Gospel. 

• My husband and I also believe women should not preach from the pulpit. We believe this is the order handed down by God through Paul. 

Some of the differences in doctrine we have encountered in different places have been: 

• Acceptance and encouragement of female pastors. 

• Belief that infants need to be baptized. 

• Belief that baptism is salvific. 

• Belief that the Lord’s Supper is salvific. 

• Belief that Christ is truly present in the elements of the Lord’s Supper. 

We have come to realize that we cannot attend where these things are taught and affirmed every week. 

Biblical Preaching 

This is definitely one of the areas where we have discovered we need to be more specific. Inspirational stories with a few Bible verses sprinkled in is not “sound Biblical preaching.” So, we have had to define it further: We would like to have preaching directly from the scriptures, that teaches from the scriptures verse by verse. 

This has proven more difficult to find. It seems that we encounter a lot of pastors who preach to the lowest common denominators of faith and knowledge in the congregation. We understand the reasoning behind it, but as Christians who have studied more deeply, we want more. We don’t want to stay in the shallow end forever. 

Church Community 

I realize that I haven’t really pinpointed what we want from church community, and I think that is part of the problem. We want: 

• Fellowship with like-minded believers 

• A small group Bible study with people who love the word and really want to study it 

• Friends to live the Christian life with and provide accountability to each other. 

Church leadership determines church community in many ways. For one thing, there’s the schedule. The main ways in which we have experienced church community are: 

• Coffee hour 

• Small groups 

• Wednesday evening services (if they occur) 

• Sunday evening services (even rarer than Wednesday evening services) 

• Sunday School 

However, we have been to some churches where nobody attends anything except the regular worship service. They tick that off the box and then race out the church doors, so we never get past “hello” and the occasional church activity with them. This makes the other way we have experienced church community much more challenging: 

• Having dinner with people from church 

When this happens, it’s a great blessing, but we have attended churches for long periods of time without this ever occurring. 

We have been looking for a good small group for nine years. In nine years, we have belonged to one small group. One. None of the other churches had small groups — or we started attending in the summer while small groups were “on break” and left before they started up again. We have asked other couples, periodically, if they would like to have a small group with us, but nobody has been interested. Or, more often, people are too busy. 

Earlier this year, we encountered something like a small group on Wednesday evenings. But it was held at the church, not in a home, and there were anywhere from 15 to 20 people in attendance, which makes discussions challenging. 

We found at the Wednesday evening group, and my husband found at the men’s group, that the conversations were very surface, and any time a biblical discussion started to become interesting, the facilitator would bring the group “back on topic.” Why? Is there a deadline? A quiz? Why can’t we go down some rabbit holes? 

We have also had a difficult time finding congregations with people our own age. Lots of congregations with senior citizens, but we have run into the problem that they don’t invite people over, and when we invite them to our house, they often have trouble maneuvering the steps to get into our house, and our only bathroom is on the second floor. 

And, of course, we have run into the age-old problem of encountering “in groups” and “cliques.” We always volunteer to help out at churches we attend, and we are quite often met with, “Oh, thank you, but we have this covered.” The same people have been running things for years, and they have little to no interest in allowing new people to step in and help. 

These in groups have known each other for years. In some cases, they attended school together. We are new to this community. I don’t know how many years it would take to break into an in group. We are in our fifties. We don’t have that much time. 

Popcorn at the Pastor’s 

We are feeling hopeful about the new church we’ve been attending. Realizing that it is difficult to give up mid-week services during summer, the pastor has instituted Popcorn at the Pastor’s every other week. 

The first week we went, we spent time talking with the pastor and hearing his story: He, his wife, and their five children served as missionaries in Togo for 15 years. He has only been a pastor for five years, and I think that’s a good thing. They miss Togo, but their eldest children were approaching college age, so they came back to the States. 

We were getting ready to leave, and I mentioned to a couple that I was grieved because my children aren’t saved. They are adults now, out of the house, and not really receptive to me proselytizing to them. I asked, “How do you repent of that?” 

The woman said, “Well, God knew that when He gave your children to you. He knew where you were in your life, and He still gave them to you. And what about the people who do raise their children up with the gospel, and their children still aren’t saved?” 

Her own daughter is included in that number. 

I have mentioned my children and my regrets to people before, but her answer really struck a chord with me: God knew, and He gave me my children anyway. And even people who do raise their children with the gospel are not promised that their children will accept it. And my past, my mistakes don’t mean my children will never turn to Christ. I have to be okay with maybe not knowing about it or seeing it during my time on earth. 

I sat down on the floor and we talked some more, and the husband said, “This regret you feel — it’s not repentance. It’s sadness and shame. You have already repented. Repenting is turning away from sin, turning to God. You have to let go of the sadness and the shame. Those are not repentance. God has forgiven you. You have to let it go.” 

And that hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve never heard it explained that way. Even when I have talked to pastors over the years about my children. I have heard people say that God’s grace is bigger than my sin, but I hadn’t really thought about how to separate my feelings from my repentance. 

Even one of my sons has told me before that he thinks I’m doing penance because I feel so bad about mistakes I’ve made as a parent. But the way this man articulated what I was doing had an impact on my thinking. 

These were brief conversations, but profound: In them, I found grace. 

Since then we have gone out for Mexican twice: One weekend, we  had dinner with the pastor and his wife. Last weekend, we went out to the same Mexican restaurant with a different couple who had asked us if we would like to have dinner.  One of the ways I know this congregation has more people our age than anywhere we have yet visited is that half of the women in the congregation have my first name, including the women in both of these couples. My first name was very popular at one time. 

We are having a Bible study with the second couple tomorrow night. The topic is faith. Our approach is to consult Strong’s Concordance, read the scriptures about the topic, and see what the scriptures say before consulting any commentary. They seem as hungry as we are for fellowship and deep scripture study. 

We were invited to have dinner with yet a third couple this Saturday evening. 

The pastor preaches line by line, verse by verse from the scriptures. Every time he finishes preaching for the week, I wish he would go for another hour. He assures me that I am in the minority of feeling this way. 

Before we started attending this church, he gave two sermons that we watched online after we started attending. He was talking about God’s profound love for us, and he broke down at the pulpit and cried. The following week, he continued by asking the congregation what they are there for. He said, “If you are here just to check off some boxes, please go somewhere else.” It wasn’t mean. It was just a genuine entreaty for people to reflect about why they are there and what they believe. 

I stood up and cheered in our living room. I’ve never heard anyone say anything like that from the pulpit before. It often seems to me that pastors are more worried about having packed seats week after week than about the genuine content of their people’s hearts, and the genuine state of their souls. 

Many people think they are saved, but what are the fruits? Where are the fruits? 

We have started to identify some of the “in groups” and cliques at this church, but we are feeling hopeful because of some of the conversations we have had and because of our pastor’s heart. 

I hope we have found it. I hope if we haven’t found it we won’t give up. 

I would like to ask you, Emma’s readers: 

• If you attend a church, how did you find it? Have you encountered any of the same challenges we have? If the challenges you have found are different, please share what they were! 

• Do you think we are asking for too much? It doesn’t feel like we are, but maybe we are. 

• If you have looked for similar things, have you found them? 

• Or do you think churches have changed so much in the past few years that it’s simply not possible for us to find these things, so maybe we need to revise our list?